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Sunday, October 30, 2011

Fall Fest Pumpkin Cake

I saw a pumpkin cake done two different ways on Pinterest and decided it was a really really cute idea to make for this years Fall Fest cake walk at church. I love decorating yummy and cute cakes, though I'm pretty amateur yet.

First of all, I didn't even have a bundt pan to begin this, but when I called my sister she just happened to be at Goodwill, where she found this pan for 49 cents!!!

Before you look at the next picture, I have to confess, I don't always make homemade cakes. Often when I'm working on a cake for an event (like a birthday, graduation, or something like this) I use a box mix and doctor it by adding a box of pudding and/or buttermilk powder or other spices. Some may argue it doesn't take much more time to make a homemade cake, but so far I haven't found a perfect go to base cake that doesn't take long and "always" turns out. Box mixes seldom fail. So for this one I did use box mixes.

Starting Supplies

I had two yellow mixes and one devil's food. I also needed to make some cupcakes for a trick or treat gathering at my sister in laws so I decided to go with one half of the pumpkin being chocolate and half being yellow so that I could use the second yellow mix to make pumpkin spice cupcakes.

So I mixed up each of the mixes and made two seperate bundt cakes. While the cakes were baking I made Pumpkin Spice Buttercream frosting (this was homemade!). The recipe I used as a "guideline" is Wilton's Buttercream. I doubled this recipe as I had a cake and 2.5 dozen cupcakes I would be frosting. I didn't sift my powdered sugar and I didn't use clear vanilla. I used Atecco food coloring gel to make a peachish/orange color and then a light brown for the stem. I also added pumpkin pie spice to most of the frosting.

When the cakes were finished baking and had cooled I trimmed the tops.

I picked up a cute fall plate at the Dollar Tree that I used as a base for the cake.

I put the bottom cake on the plate "upside down" and then the second cake on the top.

My original idea was smooth frosting that would show off the "ridges" of the pumpkin. I started with a crumb coat. I love crumb coats (frosting a cake with a really thin layer of frosting and then refrigerating it for a little while to trap your crumbs) . It was always really frustrating to have all the icky crumbs spoiling my frosting job and one day I was reading some decorating tips and thought, hmm I should try that. Now I swear by it. My sister prefers to just freeze her cakes before frosting but that's not usually possible for me as I'm often baking and frosting the same day.

While applying the crumb coat I realized I was not going to get the smooth look I wanted, at least not with the short time I was working with (it was probably 10:30 pm at this point). So in the end I went with a "swirly" look.

For the stem I made a really small batch of rice crispy treat and using the bundt pan formed a stem that would sit on top of the hole in the middle. For the leafy decoration I melted some white baking chips and used some (Atecco) food coloring and a Wilton Icing bag to pipe it on. (sorry no pictures of those steps, I was really rushing to try to get to bed before it got too late at that point).

I think it turned out pretty cute even though it wasn't exactly how I originally envisioned it. I sure hope the cake walk winners enjoyed it as much as I did!